Six Years in Experiential Learning

I have spent the past six years leading experiential learning (EL) strategy at UCalgary, first as Academic Lead in the Office of Experiential Learning (OEL) and then as Educational Leader in Residence in the Taylor Institute. As those roles come to an end, I want to share some reflections, not as a victory lap, but as an honest account of the trade-offs and tensions of EL practice in a large research-intensive university.

Equity is not an add-on

One of the most important things I learned early on, through the OEL’s Equitable Pathways Project, was that EL equity is not an add-on. In a survey of over 2,000 UCalgary students, when we asked what got in the way of them doing EL, 86% cited lack of time or exhaustion as barriers to participation, and 78% expressed doubts about their qualifications or described experiences of imposter syndrome (Stowe et al., 2022b). Others said they couldn’t sign up for anything extra because of financial constraints, or that they couldn’t locate where these opportunities were happening across campus.

That question about EL equity and access, and about promoting student EL as both a set of premium opportunities and something woven through the curriculum, required us to be clearer about what we meant by experiential learning in the first place. Definitions matter, especially when resources, recognition and student access depend on them. Our original framework served us well as a starting point, but four years of conversations with the campus community had surfaced its limits. 

This is part of why the OEL was tasked with revising our institutional EL definition and framework. Moving away from discrete categories of EL and a wordy definition, toward a succinct definition and a continuum that describes EL by environment and focus rather than type, makes room for the full diversity of experiential approaches across campus, including those grounded in Indigenous pedagogies that our previous framework left invisible.

The revised definition captures that shift. UCalgary’s experiential learning is now defined as learning by doing, being, connecting and reflecting. Being and connecting draw on Indigenous pedagogies that understand knowledge as relational and holistic. Including them isn’t a nod to the Indigenous strategy; it changes what we measure and what we value. The A.I.R. framework (Authentic Experience, Intentional Design, Reflection) provides the quality standard that holds across both curricular and co-curricular contexts (Flanagan et al., 2024).

Curricular EL or Small EL makes the most difference for the most students

The expanded framework opened space for work my colleagues and I now call Small EL: experiential learning that is intentionally narrow in scope, time-bounded, focused, and lower-risk, designed to integrate into regular instruction (Stowe et al., in press). Across the new framework, curricular EL or Small El is where the equity argument has the most weight. When EL is embedded in regular coursework, it reaches students who cannot pursue standalone placements and doesn't require them to see themselves as "EL students" before they can access it. Faculty across disciplines have for a long time run case studies, simulations, field observations and student-led activities that constitute genuine EL but without the naming, recognition or support that would let that work grow. The work was always there but what's new is that we can finally see it and name it. 

There is one more argument for Small EL I find increasingly compelling. We are teaching in a moment when screen-mediated learning has become the default, and the attrition of direct, embodied experience has real consequences for empathy, attention and connection (Rosen 2024). Even small-scale EL insists on encounter with real problems, real people and real uncertainty. Because Small EL happens inside the courses students are already taking, this kind of embodied practice reaches the very students whose schedules, finances, or sense of belonging keep them out of EL experiences. From my perspective, the pedagogical case and the equity case are the same case.

A twenty-minute simulation is not a four-month co-op, and I want to be clear about that. Small EL is a complement to immersive experience, not a substitute. What it offers is accessibility and helps all students experience an EL opportunity. The rhetoric of accessibility in EL only has substance if design addresses students' realities. By expanding what we recognize as EL, resourcing what faculty are already doing, and amplifying what we do in the curricular space, will help all students access EL.

¹Small EL is a nod to James Lang’s ideas found in his book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.

References

Flanagan, K., Martineau, C., Stowe, L., Kenny, N., & Kaipainen, E. (2024). The land and the A.I.R.: Revisioning experiential learning on a Canadian campus. Experiential Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 7(3).

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. Jossey-Bass.

Rosen, C. (2024). The extinction of experience: Being human in a disenchanted world. W. W. Norton & Company.

Stowe, L., O'Connell, J., Chew, S., Braun, R., & Kaipainen, E. (2022). Equitable pathways to experiential learning. University of Calgary. https://ucalgary.ca/sites/default/files/teams/435/EquitablePathwaystoEL_December2022.pdf

Stowe, L., Flanagan, K., Mason, D., Summers, M., & Johnston, D. (in press). Small teaching meets experiential learning: A case and framework for accessible experiential learning in post-secondary education. Teaching and Learning Inquiry.